Benedict Cumberbatch is opening up about how fatherhood changed him — as both a man and an actor.
“That’s what changes how you act, when you become a father,” the Marvel star, 49, said in an interview with The Times of London published on Friday, November 7, adding that becoming a dad to his three sons made his “emotions paper thin.”
(Cumberbatch shares Christopher, Hal and Finn with his wife, Sophie Hunter.)
“It isn’t necessarily crossovers between your experience and the character’s, it’s that you become an unfettered channel to stuff that you weren’t before,” the actor added. “Barbie makes you cry and other things make you angry.”
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Cumberbatch stars in the upcoming film adaptation of Max Porter’s 2015 novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. The book and film are about the sudden and unexpected departure of Cumberbatch’s character’s wife.
“I remember a babysitter looking after me and my brother quite soon after my dad died and we were playing his favorite game, where we kicked each other until one of us begged for mercy, laughing,” Porter told the publication, explaining how his own father’s death influenced his work. “The babysitter said, ‘I don’t know how you guys can be so cheerful after what’s happened to you.’ Should we have stopped being boys and been sad all the time? To perform our sadness for her?”
Cumberbatch then said of an especially sad scene in the film, “When we filmed the scene where Dad is packing his wife’s clothes and he smells her cardigan, people left the set because they couldn’t keep their crying quiet.”
The actor previously opened up about how he’s been impacted by fatherhood in a January 2025 interview with Variety.
“The minute you have kids this sense of time sinks in far more profoundly,” he explained to the publication at the time. “My youngest is turning 6 tomorrow, and I’m like, ‘I will be in my 60s when he’s 21,’ you know? It’s crazy. It’s gone so fast. So there’s a huge shift in priorities, and it makes you value what you do with your life in a very different way.”
He continued: “It does weigh on me. When you become a parent, your thoughts turn more towards mortality.”
Cumberbatch is generally quite private when it comes to his family. Back in February 2022, he spoke about his brood while accepting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He said of Hunter, “Together, we’ve created an amazing family of three extraordinary little human beings, who again, I would say a lot about, but you know what I feel about them, and this is public. They’re amazing, and they taught me a lot of what I now do and know, and they’ve also undone a lot of what I do.”
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He also revealed that his kids treat him like any other dad, despite his career and Hollywood superstardom.
“Should anyone wonder if I can’t recover from this kind of celebration and ego pump, ‘Shut up, daddy,’ ‘Stupid fart face,’ being hit in the face, fought over … is a daily occurrence for me at home, so thank you for keeping me grounded, boys,” he continued. “One day in disguises, maybe we’ll sneak out here and have a little photograph all together on daddy’s star. You’re my little stars, and I adore you.”
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